President Moon Jae-in has called for the mobilization of all available personnel to support efforts to track down and trace COVID-19 cases in the Seoul metropolitan area, which has emerged as the epicenter of the latest wave of infections.

Moon presided over a meeting with his aides on Monday and directed them to reallocate government workers, military personnel and police to testing sites to boost epidemiological survey efforts, according to Chung Man-ho, senior presidential secretary for public relations.

The senior secretary explained that there is a need to accelerate epidemiological studies in order to better manage the country's infection trend and to curb a further spread of the virus.

To accommodate those working on weekdays, the president said testing sites' operating hours should be extended into evenings and non-workdays in the capital region. He also called for more drive-through test centers to be set up.

Moon instructed the use of "rapid-speed" antigen tests that can produce results in 15 minutes compared to the roughly six hours needed for the polymerase chain reaction(PCR) tests.